Friday, July 13, 2012

wild and weedy

My garden is not a tranquil, tidy, productive little plot. It is a verdant, overgrown tangle of herbs, fruit, weeds, and veggies this year. As much as I truly enjoy dirt under my nails and the tangy smell of tomato plants and sweet soil, my focus and priorities have been elsewhere this month. Watering is the only garden task that I have kept up with as I deemed it the only truly necessary one.

I have just enjoyed the challenge of tugging hundreds of waist high weeds out of my garden plot (thankfully with shallow root systems), and the absolute beauty of it? Hip high blossoming heirloom potato plants, ruby red ripe strawberries, volunteer purple kale plants of all sizes, tomato plants up to here :), loose crumbly soil below, basil, sunflowers, and carrots, and so much more, and a mountain of green to add to the compost pile. Plus an hour or so of meditative exercise, and renewed faith in the balance of life.

Yes, some of my grown-from-seed plants undoubtedly didn't make it, but many, many, of them did, hidden and protected by the lush growth of weeds, just waiting to be uncovered so they could stretch their leaves and roots, so they could multiply their blossoms in the freshly opened spaces in between.

So, that's my philosophical take on a weedy garden. I'm not at war with my weeds (and there's still plenty out there ;) and some years are bound to be tidier than others, but like all of the other endeavors in my life, I'm not going for perfection, but for joy (and sustenance).

Well, at least you have a garden! Better than my lawn!!! And did you know, that the tangy smell of tomatoes is actually from the stems, not the tomatoes? One of the best smells in the world (along with freshly mown lawn - lucky for me!).

Sounds like our garden:) This morning I actually wanted to take a picture of our side garden with all the weeds mixed in with the plants as it looked rather lovely (picture waist high pink blooming thistle in with the 5 foot high Orach along with the artichokes and onions). The bindweed is getting a bit fierce though and growing up the plants, so we try to keep up on it, but haven't been;)

The other thing I've noticed this year within our "wild garden" is that there seems to be a plethora of good bugs that live in the weeds, so that's another reason I've left most weeds be. My husband almost dug up a huge thistle until he saw that it seemed to be a ladybug nest with a huge mass of them climbing all over the plant.

As long as the plants are still growing (and they seem to be) I'm letting it go. I was out last week and did take out some of the big weeds with thick stalks that were growing right next to the plants themselves, but like you, just don't have the time to deal or worry about the rest.

I imagine a time (it will be decades from now no doubt) when I have the time to tend a beautiful, 'perfect', weedless garden. Ha. For now, I'm with you, just trying to keep those weeds at bay enough for our veggies to thrive. And I do believe that weeds are easier to extract when they've grown quite large. We recently harvested our garlic too. So gratifying!

About Me

I am Nikole, mama to three lovely and lively kiddos. Cam is 14 years old, Sylvi is 11, and Ayla is 8. This blog is generally a chronicle of our country-living, respectful-parenting, joy-seeking, radical-unschooling life. It is a swirl of fun, learning, and creativity, all in a ragamuffin style ;-)